Blues-Rock Artist Murali Coryell Plays Infinity

September 26, 2013|By ERIK OFGANG, Special To The Courant, The Hartford Courant

Murali Coryell was destined to be a musician.

The son of guitar giant Larry Coryell, he grew up around the likes of Jimi Hendrix, Miles Davis, Carlos Santana, and Jimi Hendrix.

"I was held by Jimi Hendrix when I was three months old," he recalls with pride.

Some of the legendary rock guitarist's powers seemed to have been passed on to Coryell, who has forged a successful independent music career for himself as a blues rock artist. His sounds evoke the tradition of Hendrix and Stevie Ray Vaughan. Coryell has toured with Joe Louis Walker, received praise on the pages of Rolling Stone magazine, and in November he'll be inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame. His latest album "Murali Coryell-Live" spent three months in a row on the top 25 list on The Living Blues Radio Chart. He'll perform at Infinity Music Hall in Norfolk on Sunday, Sept. 29, at 7:30 p.m.

His encounter with Hendrix as a baby inspired one of Coryell's signature songs "I Was in the Room With Jimi," a rock blues extravaganza of a track that sees Coryell channeling his inner Hendrix with a wild guitar solo.

At the show at Infinity Hall Coryell and his power trio will be joined by special guest Mojo Myles Mancuso, who will sit in with Coryell and his band. Mancuso is a 17-year-old guitar virtuoso who has performed with his own band at festivals like Mountain Jam, The Sarasota Blues Fest and Gathering of the Vibes.

"The word prodigy tends to be over used but he really is one," Coryell says. "I've known him for a long time and he's got a maturity for the blues that no kid who is 17 has any business having. Joe Louis Walker, who I played with for three years, really mentored me and now I view myself in this mentorship role with Mojo Myles."

Growing up Coryell obviously didn't have to look far for musical inspiration.

"I grew up watching a professional musician (Larry Coryell) at the height of his career, at the height of his powers, being surrounded by other people like that," he says.

Yet the jazz music his father specialized in was not the music that captured Coryell's heart.

"When I met people like Stevie Ray Vaughan and Herbie Hancock they all said the same thing. I said 'man I want to be like you' and they said 'no man you're going to find your own thing,'" he recalls.

Coryell's own thing proved to be the blues.

"I discovered B.B. King and Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf and the blues. Once I heard that, it was a whole other world. That was the most powerful thing, it gave me chills, goosebumps, and made me feel something deep in my soul where other things didn't reach," he says. "When I got into blues, my dad encouraged me, he didn't say you have to be a jazz musician like myself, he encouraged me to follow my own path."

His father also helped him develop his guitar playing style.

"Anything I wanted to know about guitar or about music I could ask my dad and that goes to this day. He played with Jimi Hendrix, if I wanted to know how to play 'The Wind Cries Mary' he'd go 'this is what he did,'" Coryell says.

Beyond guitar playing Coryell has the ability to sing rock blues with gusto and flare.

"Sometimes I can sound sweet and other times I can sound rough and in-between so I look for the dynamics and I'm always trying to express the right emotion, the right note, it's an ongoing day to day process. I'm always trying to get better."

Coryell lives outside Woodstock N.Y. with his wife Mary and their two children.

Though his father was a huge musical influence on him, his mother, Julie Coryell, also influenced him. Coryell considers one of the more powerful songs in his catalog to be "Mother's Day," a song he wrote in tribute to her after she died in 2009 on Mother's Day.

I sang it at her funeral," he says. "It goes beyond music, it's just this human story, anybody who has a heart can relate to the sadness of losing their beloved mother."